Charmed

"[Policy] was sent out there originally by Eddie Sr. to straighten out Eddie Junior and see if he could get the place on a proper profit-making basis," says the former NFL executive. "Eddie Junior ... is a wild, loose-cannon type. The kid found out there's a place called Las Vegas, and he likes Las Vegas very much."

"The kid [DeBartolo Jr.] was apt to do anything," says another source. "He was worse than a free spirit. He would do stupid things. He didn't have his feet on the ground."

By all accounts, DeBartolo Jr. -- who refused to comment for this story -- was a loose cannon. In 1992, he was accused of sexual assault by a waitress. He denied the charges, but reached an undisclosed settlement with the woman. Five years later, DeBartolo was charged with assault and battery in Wisconsin after fighting with Green Bay Packers' fans following a 49ers loss. The charges were dismissed after DeBartolo agreed to donate $2,500 to a Wisconsin charity.

And when money failed to keep DeBartolo out of trouble, he always had Carmen Policy.

In 1985, a rowdy Dallas Cowboys fan grabbed DeBartolo by the wrist in the lobby of a San Francisco hotel. Published reports say the 49ers owner hit the fan so hard, the guy went flying across the lobby, slamming into a wall with such force that he smashed a hole in it. Policy never lost his cool. With the lobby in chaos, he dutifully moved a potted plant to cover the hole.

The New Messiah
In February 1991 -- six months before his old client Joey Naples would be killed in a gangland execution -- Policy was named president of the 49ers. He dissolved his partnership with Flask, moved to California, and assumed responsibility for running the day-to-day operations of a team that at the time had won a record-tying four Super Bowls.

Two years later, Policy was faced with a challenge every bit as difficult as representing the likes of Ronnie Carabbia and Naples. The NFL implemented a salary cap, which forbade the 49ers and other successful teams from spending more money on players than their rivals could. By regulating teams' payrolls, league owners thought, they could level the playing field and increase competition.

As executives throughout the league wrestled with what was and wasn't allowed under the new rules, Policy, ever the studious attorney, pored over the regulations and found a loophole.

He devised a system wherein free agents were given large signing bonuses, paid up front. Under the cap verbiage, however, the amount of the bonus could be prorated over the life of the contract. For example, if Policy signed a player to a three-year, $12 million contract including a $6 million signing bonus, the player would be paid $8 million his first year, but the 49ers would only be assessed $4 million against their cap allowance.

It was a brilliant maneuver, allowing the 49ers to continue to use DeBartolo's liquid assets to attract free-agent superstars like Deion Sanders. The unique numbers-crunching reaped rewards in 1994, when the team won an unprecedented fifth Super Bowl.

But it didn't take long for other league executives to figure out how to manipulate their own cap numbers, which raises the question of whether Policy's best days as an NFL executive are behind him. His greatest asset in San Francisco -- his ability to figure out a way around the salary cap -- is now common knowledge within the NFL.

"Certainly the guy has to have some credit for the establishment of that success. You cannot deny that," says one source familiar with several NFL executives. "But is he a guy that remains a step ahead of the competition? I don't know about that. I don't know about that at all."

As Policy became the guiding hand of the 49ers, his surrogate brother, DeBartolo Jr., began looking for other ways to amuse himself. He started his own company, DeBartolo Entertainment Corp. Much to the chagrin of his anti-gambling sister Denise, he tried to start several casinos -- only to be rejected by three different states. One of those states was Ohio, despite $1.4 million that DeBartolo pumped into the gambling lobby and his promises that riverboat gambling would revive Youngstown.

So Junior was an easy mark when former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards offered to help him with a riverboat casino bid in that state. Edwards was paid $400,000 in rolls of $100 bills by DeBartolo Jr. for nebulously defined consulting services. That sounded like a bribe to federal prosecutors, who began a probe of the relationship.

It wasn't the first time questions had been raised about the DeBartolo family's business practices. In 1980, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn rejected DeBartolo Sr.'s bid to buy the Chicago White Sox. The common wisdom was that Kuhn quashed the sale because he was concerned about DeBartolo's organized crime ties, a charge Kuhn denied. DeBartolo Jr. told Sports Illustrated: "Kuhn was prejudiced. He didn't want us in the league," noting that the DeBartolo Corp. had been investigated by three state racing boards and the NFL, which found no problems.